Blow that Trumpet

Blow that Trumpet
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, & How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711



Yes, Ian’s father did seem a little crazy, but he also had interesting stories to tell.

“Before I got into a band, I used to be a roadie,” said Ian’s father.

They were sitting on his dad’s roof, drinking grape fruit juice and staring down into the neighbor’s backyard. Dogs were barking at them. The neighbor’s dogs. They had two big pit bulls. One had a viciously loud bark that almost broke their ear drums, while the other had a soft quiet bark.

“And I drove a little truck around so I could haul the band’s equipment,” his father continued.

“Different bands would hire me to be their roadie. I would haul pianos, drums, amplifiers, guitars, PA systems. I could pack up a band’s equipment and have them in and out of five different clubs in one day.”

“I hope my band will be able to go on tour sometime,” said Ian. He took a sip of his grapefruit juice and inhaled the cool air, then spat a loogie at one of the dogs below.

“You will. It’s fun. Anyway, one band asked me to play the trumpet for them once. I always liked traditional brass instruments. I was interested in the saxophone and even the trombone. But those trumpets, man. No way. There’s just something about them. I could never get my lips around a trumpet for some reason... but I know if I would’ve ever been able to get a trumpet in my mouth, I could’ve played the fuck out of that thing.”

Ian stared at his father without saying a word.

“One time I went out on a small tour with a real successful band, they had a lot of equipment and I had to hire one of my buddies to help me. He rode with me in the cab of the truck and helped tune the instruments and sold the band merchandise like t-shirts and CDs and whatnot from a booth and he would help me set up the stage and the smoke machine and get the equipment ready. It was a small tour through the southern U.S. that lasted about five weeks. The band members rode in one big car and we followed them in the truck with all the gear. Well, my buddy was real bad about not taking a bath, his personal hygiene sucked. After nine days he was getting pretty damn ripe sitting in the cab of that truck. One night we checked into a motel on our day off. We didn’t have a gig that night and we all wanted to hit the bar and hang out and find some chicks. But my buddy said he was really tired and didn’t want to go with us, said he needed to catch up on some sleep instead. I told him, ‘Well, you better take a fucking bath before you get in that clean bed. You stink, man. I can barely stand riding with you.’

“So I went over to the bar for a couple hours, shot some pool, danced with a few lovely ladies, drank a few beers, had a couple shots of whiskey, clowned around for a little bit. I got sleepy and decided to head back to the motel and guess what? My buddy is laying in the bed all covered up with those fresh clean white blankets on him snoring away. Okay, no big deal, but then I go into the bathroom to take a shit, and I look in the bath tub.

“It’s bone dry.

“There ain’t even one drop of water to be found anywhere. I could tell the soap and towels hadn’t been used. Nothing. Goddamn I was pissed off. I wiped my ass and pulled up my pants and went out of the bathroom. I went over and jerked the blankets off that sonovabitch and screamed right in his face, ‘YOU GODDAMN FILTHY MOTHERFUCKER, GET OUT OF THAT BED AND GO TAKE A FUCKING BATH! YOU SMELL WORSE THAN A PILE OF SHIT YOU GODDAMN DIRTY DEGENERATE!’

“But he just layed there like a corpse and ignored me. So I went over and dug around in my duffle bag till I found my old bullwhip. I cracked it real loud a couple times and he leaned up to see what was going on. I flung it fast and hard and wrapped it around his neck and then jerked him over to me real hard. I yanked him till he was pressed up against my chest and I was staring right into his ugly face with my eyes all narrow and evil lookin’. I whispered real low: ‘Get in there and take a shower now, motherfucker. Or you’re not riding another fucking block with me in that truck outside, you got it? You smell like a bucket of rotten fish bait.’

“And boy he did smell like somethin’ out of a live bait shop, too. But after my bullwhip trick he went into the bathroom and finally took a shower.”

Ian stared at his father. His mouth was open listening to the story. He threw his cup of grapefruit juice down at one of the pit bulls. He realized he had finally heard an anecdote from his father that he’d never heard before. “Did you really wrap a bullwhip around his neck, Dad?”

“Goddamn right I did.”

“Why were you carrying a bullwhip around?”

“For hard times, man. Being a roadie wasn’t always fun, let me tell ya. I was glad I finally started playing guitar full-time though and stopped that roadie foolishness.”

His father pushed himself up and walked across the roof, carrying his glass of juice. He muttered and grunted a few times, obviously still thinking about the old days, and his false teeth clicked in his mouth. He scratched his head and sighed.

Ian felt sorry for him.

He didn’t know where all his stories came from, or whether they were true or not. He suspected the tales could be a result of him being lonely, sitting around having conversations with himself and making things up. But maybe not. Maybe they were all true.

His father turned and shuffled across the roof toward Ian. “One more thing. I almost forgot. A girl called for you the other day. She had a sweet voice. She left her name and this number and said for you to call her anytime after 6 PM.” He lifted a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Ian.

But Ian did not recognize the girl’s name. He couldn’t remember her at all. Oh well.

Author’s Note to the Reader:

( Well the story is over and I hope you liked it. I wish I could have provided a few more shocking images – perhaps those would have been more entertaining – but I appear to be all out at the moment. Maybe you could suggest a few. I don’t really like to be shocked, myself. The minutes hours days weeks years & decades passing by at lightning speed are shocking enough for me. My life is almost over. Maybe yours is not. I wish the reader could speak. Tell me what’s on their mind today. We can do anything we want here in these pages with black marks on white backgrounds shining forth on brilliant computer screens. We are mature enough to do so, aren’t we? Tell me something about yourself, go ahead, write it in this space:

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I would like to know what’s going on with you. Personally my life is like an amusement park packed with thrills and chills... But wait, I believe Bill Hicks already said it best:

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: ‘Is this real, or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’ And we kill those people.”
– Bill Hicks

Computer programmers planning riots in cyberspace. Grizzly bears attacking wild mountain men in the forest. Raging fires being started from too much lint collecting in dryers. Beautiful thin women who can’t keep their underwear from falling down whenever they walk around town. Scientists saying there are thousands of plants and animals living and growing upon our bodies right now; hiding, crawling, eating, and sneezing away. We can’t see them but they’re still there. I think we should hire a big robot to come fry them off us with his powerful laser beam. We would all enjoy that, I’m sure, along with a few altered states of consciousness. Everything keeps getting better all the time. I love you all. Goodbye.)

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(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen (taught by Prof. Robert Siegle at Virginia Tech), If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.